There is no appetite for terror campaign, says top dissident.
There is no appetite for the ongoing campaign of dissident republican violence, a leading dissident has said.
Dominic McGlinchey Jnr, 36, whose father of the same name was the notorious INLA leader before his 1994 murder, said that republicans opposed to Sinn Fein’s strategy needed to “have a conversation about the future of the republican movement”.
The intervention by Mr McGlinchey comes as the latest in a lengthening line of veteran republicans at variance with Sinn Fein who have spoken out about the futility of the continuing campaign of bombings and shootings.
Several former IRA men have given interviews to the News Letter in which they have urged fellow republican opponents of Sinn Fein to desist from violence.
In December, former prisoner Anthony McIntyre told this newspaper: “Republicans lost the war and the IRA campaign failed and the dissidents need to be told that it failed rather than be allowed to continue thinking what they do.”
Richard O’Rawe said at that time that the dissidents’ “whole campaign is insane” and should stop.
Mr McGlinchey — who has vigorously denied an allegation that he had any involvement in the 2009 Massereene murders and has never been charged in relation to the attack — told the Irish News: “I don’t believe the appetite exists among the people. That’s not to say there is not considerable support among certain segments of republicanism for particular types of resistance but what is very clear is that the appetite is not there for a full-blown campaign.”
He added that dissidents needed to consider if “certain tactics are holding you back from entering a new field of battle”.
